Ada Latia, happily divorced after an unhappy marriage, is troubled by a link her ex has sent to her. It’s from a social media site, a story designed to spark outrage, claiming that an autistic child has accidentally killed a classmate at a school for autistics. She stares at the photo of the dead girl, a host of questions forming in her mind. The body seems posed, the room around her has been staged, and someone put makeup on the child’s face so she doesn’t look dead. Looking closer, Ada realizes its the line of makeup she invented for the cosmetics company she founded that now belongs to her ex. This doesn’t look like an accident. It looks to her like murder, by someone who is not autistic but who knows how to lie convincingly and put the blame on someone else.

The comments, typical of the internet, are full of slurs and insults against autistic people, people like Ada – probably the reason her vindictive ex sent it to her. After making a list of the elements in the photo that point to murder, she contacts the county sheriff in the town nearest the school to report it, but gets a brush-off. Wanting to do something, she leaves a voice mail at a public phone number for the FBI. To her surprise, she gets a call back from Agent Henry Bloodstone. He noticed the report, and wants to investigate. He’s willing to take it seriously because he went to school with Ada and knows that she may have been strange and unpopular, but is highly intelligent. If she thinks the photo is evidence of a homicide, he’s willing to travel to her home in Utah to find the truth.

The story is seen primarily through Ada’s eyes, and her interactions with Henry and the school personnel are highly influenced by twinned characteristics: an inability to read people’s nonverbal cues or understand their idiomatic speech patterns and a sharp capacity to see what others don’t see, particularly when interacting with autistic children at the school. When she has a chance to meet with the boy who has been blamed for the accidental death of a girl who had been his friend, she’s able to communicate with him despite his having retreated into nonverbal isolation after the traumatic event. He’s not responsible, she’s convinced, and someone is taking advantage of his vulnerability to cover up their crime.

While there’s a solid mystery plot here, the real focus of the story is seeing the investigation through the eyes of an autistic woman who has plenty of thoughts about the prejudices she faces and the misconceptions those around her have. The conversations between the well-meaning Henry and Ada particularly draw out these themes, as do the interviews she conducts with school personnel who are supposedly experts at educating autists but are frequently clueless or worse. At one point, the stress of being at the school, surrounded by strangers and feeling the pressure of solving the case cause Ada to have a meltdown that is vividly described from Ada’s point of view.

The author, who previously has published young adult series and the Linda Wallheim mystery series about a Mormon woman married to a bishop, was diagnosed with autism as an adult. Like the light she once shed on the patriarchal dynamics of Mormonism, this book takes us inside the world of autism. Though it’s different in style to the Wallheim series, it does a similar job of showing both the high points and the challenges of living outside the mainstream. Ada Latia makes for an intriguing heroine and will likely continue to show readers the world from an autistic angle in this new series.

A Special Interest in Murder is book one in the Ada Latia Mystery series by Mette Ivie Harrison.
A page-turning, red-herring-filled murder mystery with intriguing characters.
A suspenseful read that kept me on the edge of my seat.
It was full of twists and turns throughout that will have you gripped and hard to put down.

Thank You NetGalley and Severn House for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

1.5 star for me. Ada Latia is twenty-four years old woman, who got involved in solving murder of young autistic girl. Ada is also autistic ,and with help of old friend Henry Bloodstone they join together to resolve this case.

Now my one star my seem harsh,but repetition and analyzing everything over and over again took all my joy from mystery. I didn't turn pages in tension to know what happened, I turn them to be done with this book. I guess it just not for me.

Thank you netgalley and publisher for arc.

The premise of this mystery had promise, but I ultimately chose not to finish. One of the central characters is autistic, and while I appreciate the intent of including a neurodivergent lead, the portrayal here felt too robotic and one-dimensional. Instead of showing depth, growth, or nuance, the character came across more as a stereotype, which made it difficult to connect with the story.

In addition, many of the relationships in the book struck me as unhealthy, and the cast overall leaned toward unlikeable, which made it hard to stay invested. I’ve read and enjoyed many other works with neurodivergent representation, so I know it can be done with warmth and complexity. In this case, however, I felt the characterization would need significant revision for the story to resonate.

While the idea is strong, this one simply wasn’t the right fit for me.

This book was a bit boring. Every little thing is rationalized and then discussed in relation to neurodivergence in a way that could be relayed in one line instead of ten. And then the same rationalization is repeated over and over again throughout the book -- a lot of telling, and very little showing. For example, Ada misses a lot of emotional cues from neurotypical people, but then it is explained to the reader every single time that she misses them due to her autism (information that we already know or can infer). The premise for the mystery is also unrealistic (why on earth would someone put makeup on a child after they died to upload it on the internet?) and the main character is honestly quite unlikeable.

This is on trend but it isn't very good. It pains me to write that because I'm a fan of the Linda Wallheim series. This feels as though it was written by another author. Ada, the heroine, is a neurodivergent genius who was a cosmetics mogul and was married but now she's not. And she's 24. It's unlikely that an FBI agent would step into a case like this one without a partner and over local authorities. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Not going to pile on but sorry to say can't recommend.

What is interesting about this book is the author writing fiction from the perspective of an autistic woman, in the aftermath of her own personal autism diagnosis, and seemingly incorporating some of what she's learned into the story. Not all of this mystery came together well for me, but I'm hoping this is the start of a series as I think there's a lot of room for stories with Ada Latia.

This is the first book in a new cosy mystery series. I was really looking forward to reading this but unfortunately it was not for me. Loved how the fmc is autistic but did not enjoy the writing style or story. Thank you to Netgalley and Severn House for ARC

I wanted to love this, but I don’t feel I can give it the praise I want.

The good: this definitely feels like an autistic person wrote it, and I love to see that representation. The story delved into some complex topics of autism and autistic support, which was great to see discussed in a longer, narrative format. Ada’s descriptions of meltdowns I can imagine being useful as educational tools.

The mid: this mystery was not a great / difficult one. The clues were structured a little too simply and anyone who understands autism even slightly could solve critical portions of the story. This is a book about autism with a mystery framing device, rather than a mystery with an autistic protagonist.

The ugly: IMO this played a little too hard on the idea that neurotypicals are liars or untrustworthy. Despite the story wanting to point out how neurotypical folks also fail to bridge the empathy gap, most of the neurotypical characters were either negligent or downright evil. If this is how the author feels, that’s quite sad - but based on my experience, many autists have more subtlety and nuance and empathy than this book might lead you to assume.

When I first saw this I was super interested because I love a good mystery but this story did not live up to my expectations. I didn’t particularly like the writing style, it seemed all over the place. The characters fell flat and lacked depth. The fmc, Ada, is very blunt and borderline rude, and I was not vibing with her. She spent half the time complaining and thinking people were laughing at her, and complaining that Henry was asking her questions. She was so back and forth, and contradicted herself so many times, it quite honestly annoyed me. She was not being fair to Henry for a majority of the book. Ada’s job is researching ways to communicate with aliens but the way she would randomly go on tangents about aliens didn’t add anything to the overall plot and I felt they were just there as filler paragraphs.

I really struggled getting through this one. It was only 223 pages but it felt longer because the pacing was very slow. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters or get immersed in the storyline. The whole book was about Henry and Ada investigating and interviewing the staff about the autistic student’s death at the NAVITEK school. This book had no action, no further mystery, no suspensefulness, no twists or turns that kept me engaged or further interested in the story. And honestly the ending was predictable, there were very obvious hints as to who it was.

I do gotta say though, it was touching to read about the staff and how autism, and the students impacted their life.

thank you Severn House & Netgalley for the arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

DNF - while I loved the author's LInda Wallheim series, this one's writing quality is lesser. There's too much repetition about Ada Latia's neurodivergence, too much telling and not showing about her life and the investigation she starts.

eARC provided by publisher via Netgalley.

um, what was this? okay, so i came into this unsure what it was going to be like but fairly certain I was going to like it. i mean, autistic, alien-obsessed former cosmetics millionaire sleuths at a school for autistic kids? it had to be great. sadly for this book, one doesn't rate on how it sounds, but how it actually is, and this one completely failed to deliver. the sleuth was constantly trying to invalidate others' experienecs, both neurotypical people and other neurodivergent people, because they didn't present exactly the same. the plot holes are gaping, the resolution is incredibly weird, the setting isn't fleshed out enough... the only thing i liked was the interviews part, where the suspects (workers and people around the school) were interviewed. 2 stars tysm for the arc.

I really wish I could say I liked this but I didn’t. I found the representation of Ada very stereotypical, I really didn’t like her character. The story was filled with plotholes, like why did the FBI take the case in the first place? I also found the writing style very difficult to read with very short and choppy sentences.

I will say I did really like the positive representation of Autistic people, especially the kids at the school. And I loved reading the teachers perspectives on why they chose to work in Autistic education.

All in all I just wasn't a huge fan, but I still commend the author for a great idea.

"A brilliant neurodivergent female sleuth colliding with an FBI agent with a secret. A crime that is not all it seems. A page-turning, red-herring-filled murder mystery, perfect for fans of Nita Prose, Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz.

Ada Latia is twenty-four years old. She used to be the youngest millionaire in the cosmetics industry. She used to be married. Now, she spends her time studying ways to communicate with aliens. After all, aliens could not possibly be more cruel or deceitful than other humans.

Ada's spiteful ex-husband Rex believes autistic people like her are monsters, so she's not surprised when he calls her to share a clickbait article gleefully shouting that one autistic child has killed another at a special school in Idaho.

Rex just means to hurt her, but when Ada reads the article, it's not the lies about autism being fake that catch her eye: it's a disturbing photograph of the dead child. The image of the girl is perfect - too perfect. As if someone has committed a murder, and then carefully staged the scene to cover it up.

Ada reports her suspicions to the FBI, and the case crosses the desk of her old classmate Henry Bloodstone, who invites her to assist him. Ada's not a trained investigator. It's painful for her to come up against situations she's not an expert in. She barely remembers Henry, even though it's clear that he remembers her. But the death is a mystery - and Ada, who counts murder as one of her special interests, has never learned to let a mystery go."

For fans of Patience.

˗ˏˋ 2 stars ⟡ ݁₊ .

im still not sure how i feel about this book. i didn't really like the writing style as most of her sentences were short and choppy and that kinda messed with me. despite this book being 200 pages short, the pace of the mystery was excruciatingly slow to me and made me keep putting down the book. the only reason i finished this book is bc i agreed to ARC read it.

⤷ thank you to netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It felt less like a murder mystery and more like a difficult look at the world through an autist’s eyes with some lectures on bullying and misogyny that all women face.

Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for this DRC.
#ASpecialInterestinMurder #NetGalley

I was interested in this title because the protagonist was someone with autism and I liked the idea of a sort of cozy mystery that played with that dynamic. Ada was maybe a bit rigid in a kind of caricature of an autistic person way but I could see her mellowing over the course of a series. I was not prepared for the graphic nature of the photograph of a dead child that takes up space in the opening pages - it didn't really fit with the set up that was more in line with a cozy mystery. There were a number of things that really took me out of the story - how quickly someone from the FBI gets back to Ada after her tip, the fact that there was this graphic image of a dead child floating around the internet, the low-key romantic vibes between Ada and Henry *four months after the horrific premature death of his wife* and yet "I still found myself drawn into the mystery. The mystery was well plotted and the pacing was good - I'm still not sure that I understand why our protagonist took a timeout of one entire day in the process but otherwise it was well done in terms of pace.

I do think this book suffered a bit from an identity crisis. Did it want to be a cozy mystery, something more Agatha Christie-esque or was it aiming for Tana French with a dark underside? The word autistic was used 237 times which felt a bit heavy handed.

I did enjoy the read though, I am fond of Ada Latia and | probably would read a follow up and hope that the overall affect was stronger. 2.75 stars

When I read that the main character was neurodivergent I was immediately excited to read but the book fell a bit flat for me. The story could have gone in a lot of directions but for me I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to.

The writing style is overly simplistic and lacks depth, making the prose feel choppy and elementary. Characterization, particularly of the protagonist, is also problematic. While neurodivergence is central to the character’s identity, the portrayal often comes across as one-dimensional and reductive, emphasizing diagnostic traits in a way that feels both unrealistic and, at times, alienating—even to neurodivergent readers.

The pacing is slow for a mystery, with little tension to sustain interest. While brevity might appeal to some readers—it’s a quick read—the story’s underdeveloped characters and flat narrative left little impact. Ultimately, this book had potential but didn't resonate with me.

I did not finish this book. I thought it would be something I would enjoy and then I ended up not liking it that much. I think that some people would really enjoy this book. I just personally didn’t and don’t feel the need to continue reading it. I gave it 50% and just wasn’t into it. I constantly was wanting to read other books.

I gave it three stars because I had to give it a rating. I don’t think it deserves two stars or lower. I do think people would like this book. I just personally didn’t.